1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a cyclonic vacuum cleaner, particularly to a stick type one.
2. Description of the Related Art
One of conventional cyclonic vacuum cleaners of this type is disclosed in, for example, Japanese Un-Examined patent publication No. 2001-104223. The disclosed vacuum cleaner comprises a cleaner body including a built-in fan motor, a suction passage (an introducing portion) provided in its rear portion and a suction opening (a sucking nozzle) provided in its lower portion, wherein a dust box (a cyclonic portion), having a bottom and an intake hole formed tangentially on a sidewall, is detachably attached to the cleaner body. By actuating the motor fan, a dust-laden air is sucked from the suction opening and then flows through the suction passage and the intake hole to reach the inside of the dust box where it is converted into a vortex flow, so that the dust is separated by a centrifugal force developed inside the dust box. According to such conventional cyclonic vacuum cleaners, the dust box is formed slenderer in the top to bottom direction, so that dust-collecting performance can be improved due to the rotational speed of the vortex flow being higher as it goes downward.
According to such conventional cyclonic vacuum cleaners, however, as dust-laden air must be introduced from an upper side of the dust box, the suction passage from the suction opening to the dust box would inevitably become lengthy, thus resulting not only in a complex structure of the vacuum cleaner as a whole, but also in the increased number of components that eventually leads to high manufacture costs, even leading to a likelihood of airflow leakage to occur in joints between such increased components.
Further, when film-like or clumpy dusts are sucked, for instance, the suction passage may happen to be clogged with such dusts, thus causing a problem of poor maintainability due to a difficulty in removing such dusts caught in the suction passage. Still further, in the case that the dust box is formed slenderer in the top to bottom direction to improve the dust-collecting performance, the floor that has been already cleaned is likely to be littered with the dusts again as the dust box has to be temporarily laid down on the floor when users let go hold of it in the case of detaching it from the cleaner body to dump the dusts or doing maintenance on the vacuum cleaner.